BJP hits out at Sena in Kalyan

“The party will see to it that you are not saddled with an unwanted alliance,” leader of opposition in the Legislative Council Nitin Gadkari told the gathering. However, he fought shy of taking any names or frontally attacking the Sena, unlike many of the leaders who spoke before him. He chose to speak more on the accountability of elected representatives than anything else but later told Newsline: “It seems unlikely that an alliance will now happen, though we will have to gauge the dynamics at the state level before making a formal announcement.” He refusd to answer directly on what was stopping the BJP from making a formal announcement.

In his speech, Gadkari expressed surprise that inspite of the proximity to Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli lacked proper drainage facilites and kept making headlines due to epidemics. “I have rarely seen a place as filthy as Dombivli,” he said and hoped this would be on top of the next civic body’s agenda.

State BJP secretary Sharad Kulkarni told the party workers: “We had to tie up with the Sena at the Centre and state, but this consolidation of the Hindu vote was dictated by the need to keep the Congress in check. At the local level we cannot fight elections talking about Kashmir or Atalji’s achievements. People here will be more interested in knowing about development. Roads, hospitals, sanitation and drinking water. And once we take up these issues, we will have to distance ourselves from the ruling Sena, which has been singularly unsuccessful in providing these.”

The strongest attack on the Sena came from former MP Ram Kapse. “We request the party leadership to free us of the Sena’s deadload we have had trudge around with,” he said, adding, “We don’t even want a post-poll tie-up like Aurangabad. We want it like Nagpur, where we have proven to the Sena that we are not willing to play Laxman all the time.”

This was his first major attack on the Sena since 1991, when the state-level alliance saw Thane, until then the unassailed BJP bastion, being handed over to the Sena on a platter. Kapse took the worst knock due to the alliance and has been all but sidelined even within his own party since. “After the 1995 elections the Sena had the option of going with us or the Independents. Inspite of the alliance at the state and Centre, they chose to go separately. In fact, in a meeting, Sena leaders told me we could operate on an understanding even if we sat as ruling party and opposition in the House,” he told the audience.

“Today I want to tell the same leaders we are staking our claim to the ruling benches, and you will not even sit in opposition,” he said amid cheers.

According to him, the Sena had not even deputed any state level leaders to Kalyan though most of the deaths due to leptospirosis were from here. “The infection in fact spread because of their careless attitude about health and sanitation,” he alleged.

He also attacked Sena corporators for corruption. “Some of them who went around barefoot because they did not have footwear, today possess the latest cars and bungalows,” he pointed out and added, “the party seems to have a tradition of corruption.” He mentioned the Nandalal committee report in Thane where “the maximum number of Sena corporators have FIRs filed against them for corruption.”

His criticism of the way the Sena had endorsed the administration’s move to raise the water cess thrice even while the water supply remained poor drew an applause, since the area where the meeting had been organised is among the worst hit by water shortage.